Someone came running at them from the side. He stepped too close to the weightless zone and went flying up, head over heels, spinning slowly.
He fired as he rose. Gun banging in random directions.
But now they were circling around behind her. They moved cautiously, far outside her field. She could see them scurrying from bush to hillock to cactus.
A bullet whizzed so close by her ear she thought it might have hit her.
“Get back, Astrid!” Dekka said. “I’m doing all I can.”
“Do whatever it takes,” Astrid said.
“If I take Zil out the rest will run.”
“Then take him out,” Astrid said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dekka said. “Now get out of here!”
Dekka had last seen Zil off the road to her right, ahead, just out of range.
Dekka dropped her hands.
Thousands of pounds of dirt and debris that had headed skyward fell. Dekka ran straight into the storm, eyes closed, hand over her mouth.
She almost barreled into Zil. She had emerged from the pillar of falling dirt and practically ran him down.
Zil, startled, swung a shotgun barrel toward her, but she was already too close. The barrel hit her like a club, smashing against the side of her head but not hard enough to stun.
Zil tried to back off, the better to take a shot, but Dekka’s hand shot out, grabbed his ear, and yanked him toward her.
Now he managed to jam the barrel up under her chin, hard enough to snap her teeth together. She jerked back and he pulled the trigger. The blast was like a bomb going off in her face.
But she did not lose her grip on him. She yanked him closer still as he whinnied in pain and terror.
Dekka aimed her free hand down at the ground. Gravity simply disappeared.
Locked together now in a frantic, wrestling embrace, Dekka and Zil both floated upward. The dirt and debris came with them. They were the struggling center of a tornado. Zil yanked free at the cost of a ripped, bloody ear.
Dekka punched him. Her knuckles hit him squarely on the nose. She punched again and missed. The first punch had spun her away from Zil. Zil was trying to bring the gun around, but he was having the same problem she was with moving and fighting in zero gravity.
Dekka’s eyes were closing, clotted with flying sand. She couldn’t see for sure how high they had risen. Couldn’t know for sure that it was enough.
Zil twisted and shouted in triumph. The shotgun barrel was inches from her.
Dekka kicked wildly. Her boot connected with Zil’s thigh. The two of them flew apart from the impact, floating now ten feet apart. But still Zil kept the shotgun aimed at her. And the distance wasn’t enough for Dekka to be able to drop him without dropping herself as well. Not yet.
“Look down, genius,” Dekka snarled.
Zil, his own eyes squinting, glanced down.
“Shoot me and you fall,” Dekka yelled.
“Filthy freak!” Zil shouted.
He pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening. Dekka felt the wind of buckshot flying past her neck. Something hit her, like a punch.
The recoil of the shotgun blew Zil back five feet through the air.
“Yeah. Far enough,” Dekka said.
Zil cried out in terror. A single vowel that went on for the ten seconds it took Zil to fall and smash into the dirt.
Dekka wiped dirt from one eye and squinted down.
“Higher than I thought,” she said.
FORTY-TWO
6 MINUTES
MARY TERRAFINO CHECKED her watch. Minutes.
It was coming. Coming so soon.
“I just want you kids to know that I love you,” Mary said. “Alice, back from the cliff. It’s not time yet. We have to wait so that you can go with me.”
“Where are we going?” Justin asked.
“Home,” Mary said. “To our real homes. To our moms and dads.”
“How can we do that?” Justin asked.
“They’re waiting.” Mary pointed. “Just outside the wall. The Prophetess has shown us the way.”
“My mommy?” Alice asked.
“Yes, Alice,” Mary said. “Everybody’s mommy.”
“Can Roger come, too?” Justin asked.
“If he hurries,” Mary said.
“But he’s sick. His lungs are hurt.”
“Then he’ll come another time,” Mary said. Her patience was fraying. How much longer would she have to be this person? How much longer would she have to be Mother Mary?
Other kids were pressing closer now. They’d been driven up the hill, right up against the FAYZ wall by battles going on below. Drake. Zil. Evil people, awful people, ready to hurt and kill. Ready to hurt or kill these very kids unless Mary saved them.
“Soon,” Mary crooned.
“I don’t want to go without Roger,” Justin said.
“You have no choice,” Mary said.
Justin shook his head firmly. “I’m going to get him.”
“No,” Mary said.
“Yes. I am,” Justin said stubbornly.
“Shut up! I said NO!” Mary screamed. She grabbed Justin and yanked him hard by the arm. His eyes filled with tears. She shook him hard and kept screaming, “NO, NO! You’ll do as I say!”
She let him go and he fell to the ground.
Mary drew herself back, stared down in horror. What had she just done?
What had she done?
It would be okay, all of it okay, once the time came. She would be gone from this place. Gone and gone and gone, and all the children would come with her, they always did, and then they would be free.
It was for their own good.
“Mary!” It was John. How he’d made it past the fights down the road and reached her she could not imagine. Yet, here he was.
“Children,” John said. “Come with me.”
“No one is leaving,” Mary said.
“Mary…” John’s voice broke. “Mary…”
Sanjit was torn between staring in blank horror at the cliff wall just inches away from the tip of the whirling rotors, and the awful sight of a girl, the one named Penny, hanging in midair above those same rotors.
Caine stood at the top of the cliff, unafraid of falling. He wasn’t a guy who could fall, Sanjit realized. Caine could step off the edge and like the Road Runner simply hang in midair, beep beep, and zip back to solid ground.
Not so the girl named Penny.
The other one, Diana, was pleading with him. What was she saying? Drop the girl? Crash the helicopter?
Sanjit didn’t think so. He’d seen something very wrong in Diana’s dark eyes, but not murder.
Murder lived in Caine’s eyes.
Sanjit had the cyclic pulled all the way back. The rotors wanted to pull back from the cliff, but Caine would not let it go.
Diana stepped backward. Walked with halting steps to the cliff edge.
“No!” Sanjit cried, but she was falling, falling.
It all happened in a heartbeat. Diana stopped in midair.
The helicopter was released from Caine’s grip. It jerked suddenly backward.
Penny fell. The rotor blades retreated.
She fell past the rotors safely and Diana floated in midair and the helicopter roared backward like it had been on the end of a stretched bungee cord.
Diana was thrown more than lifted back onto the grass. She rolled and sprawled and looked up just in time for Sanjit to meet her eyes for a split second before he had his hands full.
The helicopter was moving backward but falling, like it intended to ram its tail rotor straight into the deck of the yacht below.
The other thing, the other thing, lift it lift it twist it twist it and up the helicopter went. It spun wildly around as Sanjit once more forgot the pedal but it was rising. Spinning and rising and spinning faster and faster and now Sanjit was jerked wildly as he fought to find the pedals.
Clockwise, slower, slower, pause, counterclockwise faster, faster, slower, p
ause.
The helicopter hovered in midair. But far from the cliff now. Out over the sea. And twice the height of the cliff.
Sanjit was rattling with nerves, teeth chattering. Virtue was still praying, gibberish mostly, and not English gibberish.
The kids were in the back screaming.
But for a few heartbeats at least, the helicopter was not falling and not spinning. It was rising.
“One thing at a time,” Sanjit told himself. “Stop going up.” He loosened his death grip, and the twist grip went back toward neutral. He kept the pedals right where they were. He did not move the cyclic.
The helicopter was pointing toward the mainland. Not toward Perdido Beach, exactly, but toward the mainland.
Virtue stopped praying. He looked at Sanjit with huge eyes. “I think I pooped a little.”
“Just a little?” Sanjit said. “Then you’ve got nerves of steel, Choo.”
He aimed and pushed the cyclic forward.
The helicopter roared toward the mainland.
Brittney stared down at Edilio. He was facedown in the sand.
He bore the mark of a whip. His neck was raw and bloody, as though he had been lynched.
Tanner was there, too, looking down at him.
“Is he dead?” Brittney asked fearfully.
Tanner did not answer. Brittney knelt beside Edilio. She could see grains of sand move as he exhaled.
Alive. Barely. By the grace of God.
Brittney touched his face. Her fingers left a trace of mud behind.
She stood up.
“The demon,” Brittney said. “The evil one.”
“Yes,” Tanner said.
“What should I do?” Brittney asked.
“Good,” Tanner said. “You must serve God and resist evil.”
She looked at him, eyes blurring with tears. “I don’t know how.”
Tanner looked past her, raising glowing eyes to the hill that rose behind Brittney.
She turned away from Edilio. She saw Zil fall to earth. Saw Dekka sinking slowly in a pillar of dust. Saw Astrid with her little brother. Saw children running up the hill, still panicked.
“Calvary,” Tanner said. “Golgotha.”
“No,” Brittney said.
“You must do as God wills,” Tanner said.
Brittney stood still. Her feet did not feel the warmth of the sand beneath them. Her skin did not feel the slight breeze from the ocean. She did not smell the salt spray.
“Climb the hill, Brittney. Climb to the place of death.”
“I will,” Brittney said.
She began to walk. She was alone, everyone else ahead, she the last to climb the hill.
Dekka was just coming down to earth. Astrid was racing ahead, pulling Nemesis with her.
How did she know to call him that? She had known Little Pete before, back in the old days. She knew his name. But in her mind the name Nemesis had formed when she saw him. And a surge of pure rage.
Is he the evil one, Lord? She stopped, momentarily confused as Astrid and Little Pete ran ahead.
Her arm twitched. Stretched. So very strange.
And her braces were turning liquid, leaving only a metallic slick on sharp teeth.
Zil lay groaning, his legs twisted at impossible angles.
Brittney passed him by.
She would meet the evil one when she reached the top. And then would come the battle.
“Everyone hold hands,” Mary said.
The children were slow to react. But then, one by one, their little faces turned to the sunset, they reached out for each other.
Mary’s helpers, carrying the babies, stood in the line with all the others.
“It’s coming, children,” Mary said.
“Hold tight to each other…
“Be ready, children. Be ready to jump. You have to jump so high to go to your mommy’s arms…”
Mary felt it beginning, just as she had known it would. The time had come.
Fifteen years before, at this very hour, at this very minute, Mary Terrafino was born…
Sam could hear nothing but a hurricane wind in his ears. He could feel nothing but the manic gyration of the skateboard under his feet, rattling up through every bone in his body. That and Brianna’s hands on his back, pushing him, and again and again grabbing him, righting him, guiding him on a ride that made the craziest roller coaster Sam had ever experienced look like a quiet stroll.
Up the road from the power plant.
Down the highway, slaloming through abandoned or crashed cars.
Then a blistering few seconds of tearing through town.
A turn so sharp he was airborne and completely off the board, flying through the air.
Brianna raced out in front of him, grabbed his two kicking feet and guided them back onto the board. Like a sack of cement. Sam couldn’t believe he hadn’t broken both legs, he hit so hard. But Brianna’s hands held him steady, pushing and guiding him.
Then a blur and a sudden, shocking, gut-wrenching stop.
He was pretty sure he’d been screaming the whole time.
“We’re there,” Brianna said.
Time stopped for Mary. People froze. The very molecules of air seemed to stop vibrating.
Yes, just as others had described it. The poof. The big one-five.
And there, oh God, her mother.
The mother of Mother Mary, Mary thought. Not beautiful, maybe, not so very beautiful in reality as she had become in memory. But so warm and so inviting.
“Come on, honey,” her mother said. “It’s time to lay down the burden.”
“Mom…I’ve missed you so much.”
Her mother held her hands out, a waiting hug. Waiting. Arms open. Face smiling through tears.
“Mom…I’m scared…,” Mary said.
“Come to me, baby girl. Hold tight to their hands and come to me.”
“The littles…my kids…”
“All their mommies are with me. Bring them out of that awful place, Mary. Set them free.”
Mary stepped forward.
FORTY-THREE
0 MINUTES
ASTRID SCREAMED, “GRAB the children! Grab the children!”
She leaped to get a grip on the child nearest to her. Others just stared. Kids gaped, stunned, as Mary stepped, as if in a dream, off the cliff.
Mary dropped from sight. She was still trying to take steps as she fell.
Her grip was tight. Kids fell with her. A chain reaction. One pulling the next, pulling the next.
Dominoes off the cliff.
Justin tried to pull back when Mary pulled him over the edge of the cliff. But he wasn’t strong enough to loosen her iron grip.
He fell.
And the little girl who held his other hand fell after him.
Justin didn’t cry out. There was no time.
Rocks rushed up at him. Fast as a time when he’d been hit in the face by a dodgeball. But he knew the rocks wouldn’t sting and bounce away.
A rock monster opened jaws to receive him. Jagged stone teeth were going to chew him up.
Astrid’s grip was too weak.
The child she’d grabbed was torn from her grip.
Disappeared over the side.
She turned away, eyes wide with horror.
Brittney was there, right there, staring at her. But her face was changing, twisting, a horrible mask of melting flesh.
And Sam!
Sam, staring.
Brianna, a sudden blur as she leaped off the cliff.
Mary felt her grip on the children loosen. They weren’t falling, they were flying. Flying free.
Her mother held out her arms and Mary, free at last, flew to her.
Justin felt Mother Mary’s hand simply disappear. There, firmly gripping his one moment.
Then gone.
Justin fell.
But behind him something fell faster, a wind, a rush, a rocket. He was halfway to the rocks when the something fast hit him and knocked the air out
of him.
He flew sideways. Like a baseball that had just been hit for a home run. He was rolling across the sand of the beach now, rolling like he’d probably never stop.
He hit the sand ahead of the others who, without Brianna’s speed, simply fell toward the rocks.
“Well, if it isn’t Astrid,” Brittney said with Drake’s voice. “And you brought the Petard with you.”
Brittney, whose arm was now as long as a python, whose braces had been replaced by a shark smile, laughed.
“Surprise!” The thing that was not Brittney said.
“Drake.” Astrid gasped.
“You’re next, pretty girl. You and your idiot brother. Over the side. Jump!”
Drake lashed at her with his whip hand.
Astrid staggered back.
She reached for Little Pete. She grabbed his hand. But it slipped from her grip. Instead, she held the game player. She stared at it, uncomprehending.
Astrid took a step back in midair, tried to recover, windmilled her arms crazily, trying to maintain her balance. But she could feel the truth: she was too far.
And then, as she gave up, as she accepted the fact of death and called on God to save her brother, something hit her hard in the back.
She jerked forward. Both feet on solid ground.
“You’re welcome,” Brianna said.
The impact had thrown the game player from her hand. It spun through the air and hit a rock. Smashed.
Drake drew back his whip arm.
“Oh, I’ve been waiting for this,” Brianna said.
“No, Breeze,” Sam said. “This is my job.”
Drake whirled, seeing Sam for the first time. Drake’s mud-stained grin disappeared.
“Sam!” he said. “You really ready for another round?”
His whip snapped.
Sam raised his hand, palm out. Brilliant green light blazed. But the whip had upset Sam’s aim. Instead of burning a hole through Drake’s middle, he hit Drake’s foot.
Drake bellowed in rage. He tried to take a step forward, but his foot wasn’t just burned-it was gone. He rested his weight on a charred stump.
Sam aimed and fired and Drake fell onto his back. Both his feet were gone now.
But even as Sam watched, the legs were regenerating. Growing.
“See?” Drake said through teeth gritted more in fury and triumph than in pain. “I can’t be killed, Sam. I’ll be with you forever.”
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